Current project
A world growing around Valorie & Lucy
A living reference for characters, Patterncraft, places, chronology, unresolved questions, and future original characters. Canon can grow without forcing the world to be decided too early.
“Nothing becomes what it has never known how to be.”
Foundational principle of Patterncraft
Canon snapshot
Valorie
Twenty-four-year-old self-taught Greenworker and apothecary whose grief has led her into Hematic Patterncraft and resurrection research after the death of her fiancée, Lucy.
Canon snapshot
Lucy
Valorie's childhood best friend and fiancée: warm, protective, non-magical, and an author of romance and crime novels. Two of her books were published before her death.
Intentionally unresolved
Things we are not forcing yet
Valorie's full appearanceClothing styleWorld regionsPolitical structureLucy's book titlesExact disease nameWider witch culture
People
Characters
No characters yet.
Create a character sheet and build it gradually. Every field is optional except the character's name.
Magic system
Patterncraft
Known magical theory presented independently from any one character.
Foundation
Magic persuades; it does not invent.
Patterncraft studies the structures, traces, tendencies, and resistances that determine what something is and what it can plausibly become. Knowledge matters more than a generic reserve of magical power.
Specialization
The disciplines are maps, not borders.
Greenwork, Bloodwork, Somatic Work, Quietwork and other named fields are educational categories created by witches. Magic itself does not recognize them. Specializations can become extraordinarily narrow, overlap heavily, and may be effectively innumerable.
Four properties of a Pattern
PatternWhat something currently is.
TraceWhat it remembers having been.
TendencyWhere its processes naturally want to go.
ResistanceHow strongly it rejects an imposed change.
Commonly taught disciplines
GreenworkPlants, growth, stress response, regeneration and living botanical systems.
BloodworkBlood as direct access to a living Pattern and individual identity.
Somatic WorkAnimal and human bodies, healing, physiology and disease.
BeastworkAnimals, instinct, behavior and borrowed sensory patterns.
QuietworkDeath, decay, preservation, reanimation and post-mortem Pattern study.
EchoworkTraces retained by objects, places and repeated emotional presence.
DreamworkSleeping consciousness, memory association and altered Resistance.
BondworkRelations, oaths, belonging, wards and repeated connections.
StoneworkMinerals, metals, fracture, pressure and material structure.
Reaction WorkCombustion, fermentation, corrosion, chemistry and transformation.
SkyworkWeather, pressure, moisture, air movement and atmospheric Tendencies.
Why the list can never be complete
A specialization can form around any sufficiently studied family of Patterns or processes. One witch may spend a lifetime on fungal networks, another on scar tissue, another on river deltas, another on fermented medicines, another on thresholds in inhabited buildings. Two traditions may name the same work differently or divide one field into several.
Reference books therefore record useful traditions, not the true number of possible specializations.
Established environments
Places
Only locations already connected to the characters are recorded; the wider geography remains open.
Past
The Orphanage
For the children, it was almost too good to be true: a safe and genuinely caring home. The adults achieved that at a cost. Money was tight, staffing was cut, and employees were underpaid so the children could still have as good a childhood as possible.
Valorie and Lucy grew up here together. The library is where Valorie first found The Common Theory of Patterncraft.
Present
Valorie's Home & Garden
Valorie lives largely in isolation. Her garden is extensive, containing many kinds of flowers, herbs, plants and trees. It serves her research and apothecary work, but gardening is also one of the few things she loves independently of magical usefulness.
The exact architecture, settlement, region and broader geography remain undecided.
Secret
The Cave Beneath the Home
A hidden natural cave threaded by a small stream and overgrown with vines, flowers and living growth. Lucy's preserved body rests here. Nobody else knows the cave's true purpose.
The preservation working has begun growing beyond Valorie's original design. Roots and plants spread where she did not deliberately place them, and the uncontrolled development appears to strengthen the working rather than weaken it.
The cave need not be conscious. It may instead be an ecosystem that has spent two years becoming increasingly specialized around a single reinforced Tendency: Lucy remains.
Relative chronology
Timeline
Exact calendar years are intentionally omitted until the world's calendar is established.
Childhood
Valorie and Lucy meet
They grow up in the same orphanage and become almost inseparable.
Childhood
Valorie discovers Patterncraft
She finds The Common Theory of Patterncraft in the orphanage library and begins experimenting with plants.
Adolescence
Friendship changes
After years of effortless closeness, Valorie and Lucy begin becoming shy around each other as they realize their feelings may no longer be only friendship.
Young adulthood
Two lives grow side by side
Valorie develops her work as an apothecary and healer. Lucy writes romance and crime fiction, eventually publishing two books. Lucy sometimes accompanies Valorie to patients.
Relationship
First anniversary
Valorie gives Lucy a green crystal necklace on a leather band.
Before present
Lucy becomes ill
An unidentified aggressive disease slowly kills her despite Valorie's strongest Greenwork and herbal treatments.
2 years before present
Lucy dies
Valorie preserves her body in the hidden cave beneath her home and begins moving deeper into Bloodwork and resurrection research.
Present · Valorie age 24
The work continues
Valorie remains an apothecary, treats patients from a distance, lives in near-total isolation, and studies how Function may be returned to Patterns. The cave's Living Working has begun expanding on its own.
Published world notes
Archive
Published lore, locations, magic notes, timeline entries, and other records from the private archive.
No additional public archive entries yet.
Character records and the established world reference remain available in the other sections.